Grounded
by AgentOfAngst
Summary: What happened directly after Timephoon and the appearance of the "real" Louie. Has spoilers for The richest duck in the world now.
1. Grounded

**Set directly after Timephoon with the knowledge that I haven't seen Glomtales yet. The "I wonder who I got that from." line shook me to the core and also gave me _exactly_ what I wanted from the Della and Louie relationship. I never wanted it to be perfect and this episode and specifically that line affirms it. Anyway, I wanted to write Louie dealing with his grounding and how it might affect him. I don't know if it's the best, though.**

* * *

Louie spun the wheels of his toy truck, trying to decide between emotions. Louie got grounded a lot. All in all, just being sent to his room and told not to scheme wasn't a big surprise. It was pretty normal, actually. But it hadn't ended there, had it? She'd had to take it a step further. Dewey walked into the room. He was whistling, which meant he was trying to sound casual. More importantly, it meant he had recognized a disturbance in the force. Dewey climbed up to his bunk, the middle bunk, and pretended to be interested in some comic or another, and then it came.

Dewey's head popped over into Louie's space, looking at him look at a little toy truck, and he asked, "Are you mad at mom?"

"I don't know," Louie grunted.

"How can you not know? Either you are or aren't."

"Dewey, don't bother Louie," Huey said, glancing in the room since the door had been left open by Dewey's carelessness. When he glanced in he noticed something, the overflowing trash bin. Huey walked over, picking out the two distinct pieces of the torn-up Louie Inc. sign. Louie leaned back on his bed, dropping the truck.

"She probably didn't- she- she didn't mean- she probably-" Huey stammered sympathetically, before finally giving up and dropping the pieces of Louie's dream back in the trash can.

"You two shouldn't be in here. You're not grounded," Louie pointed out, pulling his hood over his head. Louie only ever put the hood up if things were bad. Huey jumped on the bed, not knowing the exact words to say, but wanting to provide some comfort.

"Mom never said you had to be in solitary confinement. It's just… I mean you obviously know what you did was wrong, and you definitely shouldn't have said that about mom-"

"No, I was wrong up until that point, but I won't take back the truth. I'm nothing she isn't. We're just both screw-ups." Huey winced and realized that there was nothing in his guidebook that could fix this.

"We'll come check on you later, okay?" Huey promised.

"Yeah, whatever." Louie flipped over so that he was facedown on the bed. Maybe if he could get some sleep… No, the pillow was suffocating him. Or, something was. He couldn't really tell if it was the pillow or the lump in his throat. He couldn't tell Dewey if he was mad at mom or not because he was also just so sad. Everything about today made him so sad and angry and just… Tired. But he couldn't sleep, he just couldn't sleep.

So he grabbed at his notebook, the one he'd spent the last half hour ripping pages out of, and began to draw. It was an angry sort of drawing, not in the subject matter (well not exactly) but in the way he held the colored pencil and pushed it into the paper as if this was the only way he could let out the anger that was building up. He didn't hear Webby slip past the door and come over holding a can of Pep.

"Why're there two Louies?" She asked, causing him to startle and nearly hit his head on the bunk as he sat up.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!" Webby apologized quickly, offering the Pep. He took it, cracked it open, and took a sip. Then he took another one. That was weird, Louie usually only drank the first sip of Pep.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome… Uh, wanna explain what you're drawing? And why the notebook is all ripped up?"

"It was my scheme notebook. And if you were paying attention, I can't do that anymore." Louie sounded so serious.

"And the two Louies?" Louie looked down, seeming sadder. Then he put on his act.

"That's not me that's Huey, I'm just not great at differentiating us because I suck at art." Webby could tell that this was a lie.

"You're both wearing green."

"I only have a green pencil okay?" He looked at her, begging her not to press the matter. It would be too hard to explain the symbolism when he was already so upset. Webby really wanted to pick his brain a little more but held off. It wasn't really her thing to kick a man while he was down.

It was really weird, because no one, not Webby or Huey or Dewey, thought that Louie didn't deserve to be grounded, he absolutely deserved to be grounded. But each kid had made the pilgrimage all the same because something had seemed to break that day, and they were all trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together without really knowing what was broken.

"Uh, I just wanted to see how you were doing but if you don't want to talk about it then I understand."

"I don't need to talk about it. I'm fine." Of all the weird and sad things that had been happening since the grounding, this one was the saddest. Because it wasn't abnormal for Louie. It was completely normal for Louie. It was completely normal for him to simply revert to his act and say he was fine. Everyone, except maybe Della, knew that Louie was never actually fine. He was in over his head 100% of the time, getting enough air to sputter that he was okay, before going under again.

Louie didn't even have a few minutes of painful quiet before the next pilgrim coming to check on him. He was a little surprised that Uncle Scrooge came to check in on him, but he figured it would probably be more of a lecture.

"You shouldn't have said that about your mom," Scrooge said strictly. Yep, lecture.

Normally Louie would have said something like this, "Oh good another lecture."

Today he just said, "I wasn't wrong."

"I didn't say you were wrong, lad. I just said you shouldn't have said it."

"So you think I was right about Della?" Louie asked in surprise. Scrooge winced when he noticed that Louie wasn't calling her mom right now.

"You shouldn't have said it in front of the others, but I understand why you're mad at your mom. And I realize you've been keeping it to yourself, which was bound to blow up eventually. Maybe when the heat dies down, you could have a heart to heart with her."

"I'm not mad at her…" Louie muttered.

"You sure?"

"I don't know what I feel." And that wasn't an act. Scrooge patted Louie's back and looked around his prison cell.

"Say, what happened to the statue I gave you? Goldie didn't grab it from you, did she? Because I can steal it back."

"No, I just put it away for a while. Since I'm grounded from every hobby that interests me." Louie didn't even sound bitter, just sad. Just so sad.

"Louie, she meant well."

"I miss Uncle Donald," Louie blurted, spinning the wheels on the truck that Donald had gotten him so many years ago.

"Because he wouldn't have punished you like this?"

"Because he would have earned punishing me like this. She hasn't been my mom for that long! I just… She's not my mom yet. So I don't know if I'm mad at her or just sad or if I even think there's love between us... " Now tears were welling up in Louie's eyes. Scrooge was stunned but just patted Louie's back sympathetically.

"You really should talk with her."

"Right, if I get the chance," Louie muttered with a sigh, pulling his hood up further to hide the dripping tears. Scrooge left, knowing that this was something that it was up to Della and Louie to fix together.

Louie didn't let himself cry for long. He was on edge at first, thinking that someone else would materialize to talk to him, although the people who cared had already made their rounds. He was mostly worried that Della would come in. He didn't know that since a little while after Scrooge left Della had been pacing the hallway outside, trying to decide if she should talk to him. Trying to decide if extending any sort of olive branch would undermine the punishment.

After the crying had stopped Louie made a point of ripping up the two Louies picture he'd been drawing, but he couldn't rip up the mirror across the room that communicated the same thing. He kept staring at it, growing increasingly angrier and sadder as he glowered.

"I'm not you!" He snapped at the mirror, which, though it accurately portrayed the appearance of the crying preteen, seemed like it had the face of better Louie. Fake Louie. Charming Louie. The Louie that was an act. The Louie he'd been today, the one that was a little off to all of his family, that was the real Louie. The Louie who'd pretty much given up.

"I don't even know who I am," he hissed at perfect Louie. Real Louie was the one who broke down, fake Louie was the one who cried crocodile tears to get what he wanted. There were no crocodile tears or real ones that could get him out of this. He resented himself and he resented Della because they were so similar. He still didn't regret what he'd said. He still didn't want to talk to her. He was trying his hardest not to talk to himself, but the mirror was taunting him until…

Crash.

That sound set something off in Della. What had Louie done now? She was so mad at him, so stressed and worried and sad. They really were the same person, they both felt so distant and sad and alone. She barged into the room and saw her son standing by a broken mirror.

"What did you do?" She asked, exasperated.

"It was an accident," he mumbled, close to tears.

"Clean it up." She told him, not knowing what else to say. They should have talked. They should have reached out to each other. She shouldn't have walked out of the room then. He shouldn't have let this one bad day convince him that his biological mom didn't love him. But they made those mistakes for today. Maybe, eventually, the heat would die down, and they would be okay again. Maybe. But not today.

* * *

**Hi, just a note to say that you should go read and review Time Flies (Back) when you're (Not) having fun by Akozu Heiwa because it's so awesome and angsty and great.**


	2. Not grounded

**So I finally wrote chapter two of Grounded! Also, read Timephoon: The Aftermath by soulful-sin if you like this story because I think it's a really good take on what happened after the same episode.**

**Also, also, get Disney+ because The legends of the Three Caballeros shouldn't be missed not gonna lie.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

"Aren't you going to ground him?" Della asked, catching Scrooge, grimy and tired from a hard day's work.

"Ground who?" Scrooge asked, stretching out his back and giving Della a curious look.

"Louie!"

"Ah... What for? Didn't you just ground him?"

"For the time travel thing, yeah, but shouldn't _you_ ground him for stealing your company?"

"He didn't steal my company, he became a player in a bet I maybe shouldn't have entered and cleverly won that bet."

"You're really going to consider that scheming 'making it square?' He lied to get the company, which admittedly was very helpful, but then he kept the company instead of giving it back to you."

"Della, he gave the company back."

"After-"

"After learning an important lesson in humility. A lesson hadn't learned yet. If Louie's little scheme wasn't making it square than Louie certainly knows what making it square is now. I don't think the schemes will stop but he's never going to try to run my business before he's ready. After this, if he still decides wealth is worth the work, he's really going to work for it. He'll go to business school, start Louie Inc. right. Be a better billionaire than I am. I believe this was good for him."

Scrooge looked at his niece, affectionately patting her shoulder, "Della, I know this is the hardest thing you've ever had to do. Parenting always will be. You just figured out tough love and you're going to need it in the future. But today Louie was tough loved by the entire world, and it changed him for the better. That's the _best_ part of parenting, Della! Seeing them learn and grow from their mistakes. Just look at you, standing in front of me right now, I can see that you've learned from your mistakes. You grew into an incredible young woman because you made those mistakes, and the pride I feel for you now outweighs any hurt your actions brought me. The same goes for Louie. So let yourself see how much he's grown since you've grounded him. Step back and let yourself be proud." Della let his words sink in and then threw her arms around her uncle.

"Thank you, I needed to hear that. I've been so worried about him... I guess I didn't let myself see that he's going to be okay."

"Keep an eye on them, Della. Show tough love when they need it and maybe you can prevent the biggest mistakes, but don't forget that they're growing as people every day. History can be rewritten."

"I should talk to him, shouldn't I?"

"You don't have to apologize for grounding him. But you shouldn't make sure he knows he's forgiven."

"He doesn't like me," Della confessed.

"He loves you. His life is just very different now and that's hard to get used to. He's just a kid, give him time. He might surprise you, you know?"

"I want to give him time but I'm not sure if time heals all wounds," Della confessed, "I'm not sure if he can ever forgive me for missing so much of his life."

"Perhaps he's still upset about that. It's not going to change if you don't try, though. I think he's in his room."

"I'll go check on him."

"You've got this, Della. You're both good people and I think things will work out."

Louie spun the wheels on his toy truck, deep in thought. The journal he'd torn all of his schemes out of now sat in front of him with a few notes about the day's event. He was tired, he'd worked hard for, well for nothing. Because working hard for nothing had been the right thing to do. To recognize he had gotten himself into danger by trying to be something he wasn't was world-altering. Louie Inc. 2.0., starting small this time! No schemes. Honest hard work. Humble hard work. It sounded exhausting, and boring, and lame. But running an empire he didn't deserve was, amazingly, worse. Maybe he'd find a nice balance. Maybe he'd shoot for millionaire. Multimillionaire. Maybe, in a handful of years when he'd gained life experience, he'd once again be a business partner with McDuck enterprises, this time without any trickery or bets. As he lay back and spun the wheels of his little truck, the possible diverging paths brought him comfort. He liked having things figured out, but it had been so stressful trying to force himself into one path. If he worked for it, maybe one day he'd be ready for business. Right now, he could just be a kid, turning the wheels on his truck.

There was a knock. The fact that it was a knock ruled out Dewey and Huey, who lived there. Webby sometimes knocked but he guessed, "Mom?"

"Yeah, can I come in?"

"Knock yourself out." He was prepared for a lecture. She would be mad at him, for taking over the business, for timephoon, for being a failure of a son, for being just as screwed up as she was.

"I wanted to talk to you. I feel like we haven't really left things on good terms."

"No kidding," _remember humility Louie_, "I'm sorry about what I said to you the other day." He still meant it though, he'd still been right. But Scrooge had been right when he had said that Louie shouldn't have said it, right or not.

"You were right, though. We're pretty similar." She ruffled his hair a little. That was a compliment. That was supposed to be a compliment.

"We have the same flaws, you mean."

"Yep," she admitted with a sigh, "which is why we need each other."

"I'm not mad at you, okay? I'm not mad. I just, I don't like myself, so don't expect me to be used to you right away..." Della was surprised. But only a little bit.

"I get not liking yourself. I was my only company for most of 11 years. And I know that I'm not always the best company. But I like you just fine Louie. I'm proud of how you're growing up, and I love you." Tears sprung to Louie's eyes before he could stop them. He cried so easy.

"I love you too. I know that much. I'm still figuring things out though, so be patient with me..."

"Take all the time you need, kiddo. I'll be here for you when you figure things out."

"Thanks, mom... Am I still grounded?"

"Nah. You've been through enough."

* * *

**Scrooge's monologue in this story is one of my favorite things that I've ever written and I hope you guys like it too. And I hope you check out some of my other DuckTales fanfics as well and continue spreading love in this brilliant, brilliant community. **


End file.
